Egypt has ordered back into Gaza as many as 500 Hamas gunmen and an estimated 10,000 other Palestinians who in recent days have raced into Egypt through the blown-up border wall, but many analysts believe it will be impossible to put the genie back into the bottle.
“This is a whole new ballgame,” said Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. “It has implications for Israeli-Egyptian relations and the way the whole Gaza issue is treated. It also makes the question of a Palestinian state look even more remote.”

Herzliya, Israel — When I asked my taxi driver, on the way to the opening session of the annual Herzliya Conference on Sunday, who he would vote for for prime minister today, he answered without hesitation: "Begin."
It’s true that even Menachem Begin’s political enemies considered the country’s first Likud prime minister to be a man of deep integrity who always said what he believed — a characteristic not readily found among politicians these days.
But Begin died in 1992.

Sderot, Israel — The rocket alert was drowned out by the cacophony from the children’s Tu b’Shevat party. By the time the first kids dashed to the bomb shelter at the Parent and Child Community Center here, it was too late.

The Kassam rocket thundered overhead, accompanied by a subtle tremble.

"You heard that boom," asked Dalia Yosef, the director of the Sderot Resilience Center, which focuses on easing the psychological toll of the rockets. "It’s not that far away."

In making good on his threat to pull his right-wing party out of Israel’s coalition government, Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday started the “clock ticking” on the coalition’s future, according to a prominent Israeli analyst.